One aspect of the present invention relates to a system that uses the Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and/or the Vehicle to infrastructure communication for safety and mobility applications. The invention provides methods and systems to make the V2X realized and effectively used in any intelligent transportation system toward automated vehicle system.
Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) is the main enabling technology for connected vehicle applications that will reduce vehicle crashes through fully connected transportation system with integrated wireless devices and road infrastructure. In such connected system, data among vehicles and with road infrastructure will be exchanged with acceptable time delay. DSRC is the enabler for the V2X communication and provides 360 degrees field of view with long range detection/communication capability up to 1000 meter. Data such as vehicle position, dynamics and signals can be exchanged among vehicles and road side equipments which make the deployment of safety applications such as crash avoidance systems (warning and control) possible. V2X technology will complement and get fused with the current production crash avoidance technologies that use radar and vision sensing. V2V will give drivers information needed for safer driving (driver makes safe decisions) on the road that radar and vision systems cannot provide. This V2X capability, therefore, offers enhancements to the current production crash avoidance systems, and also enables addressing more complex crash scenarios, such as those occurring at intersections. This kind of integration between the current production crash avoidance systems, V2X technology, and other transportation infrastructure paves the way for realizing automated vehicles system.
The safety, health, and cost of accidents (on both humans and properties) are major concerns for all citizens, local and Federal governments, cities, insurance companies (both for vehicles and humans), health organizations, and the Congress (especially due to the budget cuts, in every level). People inherently make a lot of mistakes during driving (and cause accidents), due to the lack of sleep, various distractions, talking to others in the vehicle, fast driving, long driving, heavy traffic, rain, snow, fog, ice, or too much drinking. If we can make the driving more automated by implementing different scale of safety applications and even controlling the motion of the vehicle for longer period of driving, that saves many lives and potentially billions of dollars each year, in US and other countries. We introduce here an automated vehicle infrastructure and control systems and methods. That is the category of which the current invention is under, where V2X communication technology is vital component of such system, with all the embodiments presented here and in the divisional cases, in this family.
Some of connected vehicle applications require data from infrastructure road side equipment (RSE). Examples of such applications are road intersection safety application which mostly requires map and traffic signal phase data to perform the appropriate threat assessment. RSE's DSRC communication range can effectively reach 800 m, as an example. RSE's physical locations selection is driven by the desired traffic safety/mobility functionality for the specific road segments of interest. As a result, it is possible that the communication range of the different RSEs will overlap. On the safety application side, say, e.g., inside the on-board unit (OBU) integrated in the vehicle, it is highly possible that the OBU is receiving data from more than one RSE. Therefore, for the safety application to perform correctly, it is essential to use the RSE data that is associated to the anticipated vehicle travel trajectory. For this intended operation to happen, the algorithm is required to select the RSE of interest for the desired active safety application. We address all of these here in our invention, as described in details below.
Some of the prior art, listed here (some US patents), discusses some of the issues for the control of the cars, but none of them has any solution similar to ours, as described in details below:                a. U.S. Pat. No. 8,618,922, Method and system for ensuring operation of limited-ability autonomous driving vehicles        b. U.S. Pat. No. 8,527,199, Automatic collection of quality control statistics for maps used in autonomous driving        c. U.S. Pat. No. 8,521,352, Controlling a vehicle having inadequate map data        d. U.S. Pat. No. 8,457,827, Modifying behavior of autonomous vehicle based on predicted behavior of other vehicles        e. U.S. Pat. No. 8,412,449, Control and systems for autonomously driven vehicles        f. U.S. Pat. No. 8,280,623, Control and systems for autonomously driven vehicles        g. U.S. Pat. No. 8,126,642, Control and systems for autonomously driven vehicles        h. U.S. Pat. No. 7,979,173, Autonomous vehicle travel control systems and methods        i. U.S. Pat. No. 7,979,172, Autonomous vehicle travel control systems and methods        j. U.S. Pat. No. 6,751,535, Travel controlling apparatus of unmanned vehicle        k. U.S. Pat. No. 5,229,941, Autonomous vehicle automatically running on route and its method        